Canada launches plan to extend high-speed Internet to remote areas

TORONTO, July 22 (Reuters) - The Canadian government on
Tuesday invited remote communities across the country that lack
high-speed Internet access to make a claim to get some of the
C$305 million ($284 million) it plans to spend over the next
three years to upgrade access.

The government's Connecting Canadians plan aims to deliver
high-speed Internet - judged to be speeds faster than 5 megabits
per second (5 Mbps) - to 280,000 households that it says sit
below that line.

Industry Minister James Moore likened the launch of the
program to such pivotal moments in the country's history as the
completion of a transnational railway and the opening of the
Northwest Passage. He said areas eligible for funding will be
made public later this year and companies will then be invited
to pitch for connection projects.

The move is part of a long-promised comprehensive plan for
digital communications and commerce that Ottawa says will also
strengthen online privacy protection and beef up cybersecurity.

Many of the underserved areas shown on a government map are
in the Prairie provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta and farther
west in British Columbia. Connection would mean that about 98
percent of Canadian households would be linked to online
services by 2017, the government said.

"Connecting Canadians is about ensuring that Canadians,
whether they live in urban centers or remote regions of the
country, have access to the latest wireless technologies and
high-speed networks at the most affordable prices possible,"
Moore said in a statement.

An OECD report on household broadband access released on
Tuesday ranked Canada, with just over 70 percent of households
with access in 2009, in the world's top quartile, while coming
in 24th out of 34 ranked countries in wireless penetration,
behind France, the United Kingdom, and well behind the United
States.

The new infrastructure being funded can be either wired or
wireless, the government said.

Critics say the government's focus on rural areas has
sidelined the urban poor, who also lack access to the Internet,
and that its minimum "high-speeds" are not good enough to
participate in video conference calls, for example.

In Canada's urban areas, Internet service providers
typically offer speeds of between 25 and 60 Mbps, and as high as
150 Mbps.